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nurse, and purchased a second-hand perambulator. Morris and John he
made
more readily welcome; not so much because of the tie of consanguinity
as because the leather business (in which he hastened to invest their
fortune of thirty thousand pounds) had recently exhibited inexplicable
symptoms of decline. A young but capable Scot was chosen as manager to
the enterprise, and the cares of business never again afflicted Joseph
Finsbury. Leaving his charges in the hands of the capable Scot (who was
married), he began his extensive travels on the Continent and in Asia
Minor.
With a polyglot Testament in one hand and a phrase-book in the other,
he groped his way among the speakers of eleven European languages.
The first of these guides is hardly applicable to the purposes of the
philosophic traveller, and even the second is designed more expressly
for the tourist than for the expert in life. But he pressed interpreters
into his service--whenever he could get their services for nothing--and
by one means and another filled many notebooks with the results of his
researches.
In these wanderings he spent several years, and only returned to England
when the increasing age of his charges needed his attention. The two
lads had been placed in a good but economical school, where they had
received a sound commercial education; which was somewhat awkward, as
the leather business was by no means in a state to court enquiry. In
fact, when Joseph went over his accounts preparatory to surrendering his
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